Translation and linguistic theory in the English Middle Ages

Tracy Annette Crouch, Purdue University

Abstract

By concentrating on the points of praxis between theories and practice of translation and the contemporaneous linguistic theories existing in the English Middle Ages, this study demonstrates how notions of language influence processes and practices of translation. In exploring the connections between language scholarship and processes of translations, two threads are traced as they weave through the medieval period: (1) the very definition of "translation," and (2) the symbiotic relationship of translation and disciplines of linguistic inquiry--grammatical, philosophical, historical, and theological. English-language translations of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy by King Alfred, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Walton are held up to the language scholarship of their respective literary periods--the Old English era, the High Middle Ages, and the Late Middle Ages. While this study does not purport to write a theory of translation for the Middle Ages, it does demonstrate that notions about language itself influence a translator's decisions and inscribe some of the parameters within which translations are produced and critiqued. An important aspect of such an approach is that it allows a twentieth-century scholar to use a translator's own contemporaries' scholarship as a gauge by which to evaluate and, it is hoped, understand translation procedures.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Astell, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Linguistics|Literature|Middle Ages|British and Irish literature

COinS